Workplace culture isn't guaranteed when you start, buy, or take over a company. It doesn’t exist solely in high-tech companies, or only in exotic locations. The fact is that building a solid office culture needs to be intentional and requires a lot of work from the company leaders. It’s a mindset that will resonate with employees when they watch their leaders lead by example. Happy leaders make happy employees. Happy employees are the first step to creating thought-leadership, industry altering innovation, and attraction of the most elite employees in any field. Need proof? Here are 7 hard facts you should know about employee happiness and how their satisfaction impacts your business.

When searching for a new hire, many HR representatives put the greatest emphasis on experience. It makes sense: You want to hire someone who is not only capable of performing the job you’re trying to fill but who can feel comfortable performing job duties effectively without assistance as quickly as possible. But in their quest to find the most qualified applicants, HR reps will often overlook cultural fit—that is finding a new hire who will mesh with the company culture.

As HR pros, we live, die, eat and breathe by our company culture. It plays a significant part in how we recruit and hire too. Evaluating culture fit helps us look beyond candidates’ qualifications to determine if their attitudes, work ethic and workplace values align with those of the company.

But how do you talk about your culture to a potential employee? More importantly, how do you define your culture so that it’s clear, translatable and transferrable throughout your organization? We believe it starts with understanding what culture really is and what it isn’t, which we reveal below: